TRANSPLANTED FIG

Both here and not here, or heard and not seen, like the schwas
pronounced in thimble, closure and asp-
idistra, the tiny fig-tree pollinator wasp
is what this fig tree needs. At the cusp
of fertility, its initially sauce-
pan-shaped flower-turned-fruit seems to clasp
its own stem and turn itself inside out, its dis-
parate inward-facing tendrils accepting the new dis-
pensation or gos-
pel of mutual aid: able to hasp

itself shut like a hard-sided purse or a granite Schloss
pushing itself up a mountain, tight as hos-
pital corners, harboring (like the LISP
programming language) recursive versions of more or less
probable next-gen selves, this sensitive vessel invites its aus-
picious visitors by keeping one crisp-
rimmed aperture open, its black and yellow concentric asp-
ects leading inward, like an archery target or an os-
prey’s eye. And yet this mini-world tree is neither predator nor Hymenoptera’s
prey: instead it remains hos-

pitable to its one partner in loss
prevention, the apparently wanderlust-driven parent whose asp-
tooth-sharp hindquarters deposit their floss-
pick-thin filaments’ cross-
pollinating gifts, sugar grains in asp-
ic, amid the plush walls of their hollow home, or rather hos-
pice, since they die there. Gossip
and TikToks warn against biting into them—backlit hosts gasp
and clutch their goatees, moss
patches, and manscapes against the gross

possibility—but (to put it charitably) they mis-
speak: already wisp-
thin, these disre-
spected symbiotes fade like cos-
play ghosts or theatre techs, their bodies’ translucent dross
pulverized, then dissolved amid the jas-
per-red, fertilized stamens, Mus-
pelheim-warm like the source of all things, while the actual fig, like a boss,
puts her best face forward to protect her pros-
pects. That’s our future in her grasp.